instead of waiting to go out on the mountain.
“Morning. Nice event your— What is Penny?” Carter asked. He wasn’t sure how to refer to her, but once people got out of high school it was hard to keep a straight face when calling them boyfriend or girlfriend.
“Well, girlfriend now,” Will said. “But I have a surprise for her on Valentine’s Day that should change that status.”
Carter smiled and nodded at him. “Glad to hear it. I like you two.”
“Thanks, buddy. You any closer to getting back in your lady’s good graces?”
“Hopefully by the end of the day I’ll have some good news for you,” Carter said. “If not you can find me in the bar.”
Will laughed as Carter had intended him to. Playing at being normal when he wasn’t. He didn’t have Lindsey and he didn’t have a broken heart. He was still hopeful he’d win her back, but if he didn’t, this would turn out to be the worst day of his life.
Yet he still was trying to play it cool so that no one could figure out how desperately he wanted and needed Lindsey in his life. He knew that nothing would be quite as good without her by his side.
He knew it. At the same time that knowledge paralyzed him. Made him unsure of what to do next.
But telling her was still a difficult thing. The words were hard, and he was so used to acting as though nothing mattered that now that something did he wasn’t sure how to proceed. He had a plan, however, even though he had no idea if it would work.
He’d called his dad to ask for advice, but the old man had told him that if he’d had the answer to what women wanted he wouldn’t have been married and divorced five times. But there had been no bitterness in his father’s voice. And Carter had realized that every man had to find the path that worked for him. For Carter he couldn’t see a path without Lindsey in it, which was why he was waiting for the right moment to show her what she meant to him instead of just finding out what he meant to her.
He had figured that out at three in the morning. Why was it that all the answers to his craziest ideas came to him then? He knew that tricking her into falling for him wasn’t the answer, but it might be the vehicle to the answer.
Like the blindfold he’d used when they’d gone to the crater. It had turned out to be a sort of magic elixir to getting her to talk about all the things she usually kept locked away.
“You keep watching the door like you can make her appear,” Will said, dragging him out of his thoughts.
“If only,” Carter grumbled. “Life would be so much easier if she’d just do what I wanted her to.”
“Really?” Will asked. “I’ve found that I don’t always know what I want when it comes to Penny. She always surprises me, and it’s better than whatever I planned.”
He looked at the other man. There was an element of truth in his words. “I just want her to be here so I can make sure she’s okay.”
That was part of it. And then he was afraid he’d probably embarrass himself by going to her and pulling her into his arms. But that was what he wanted to do. He wanted to admit that he’d had enough of chasing her from a distance. To tell her that nothing was insurmountable when they were together. To say he should never have let anger motivate him into walking away from her.
Because he knew better than to let his temper control his actions. He was all prepared to say that...and more...but then Lindsey walked into the room with her long blond hair braided to one side and hung over her shoulder.
“I’VE GOT A new rule,” Lindsey said as Penny led the way to the small stage that had been set up on the far end of the kickoff breakfast. The room was full, and she saw her teammates as well as the corporate sponsors...and Carter.
He stood by his team’s table talking to Penny’s boyfriend, Will. Penny had been sweet last night when she’d shared stories of how she’d been unsure of Will and how he’d overcome it. Elizabeth had bared her soul, as well. It had been humbling to realize that the other women had been in her shoes. She’d felt so isolated by her doubts.
“What rule?” Penny asked.
“No making important life decisions when I’ve had two glasses of wine,” Lindsey said. Last night when she’d been trying to come up with the right gesture to show Carter how much he meant to her, it had seemed a good idea. But this morning, as she’d had her hair braided to match the Ice Queen image that was often used in the media to go along with articles about her, she’d started to have second thoughts.
“Do you want to spend the rest of your life in agony?” Penny said.
She noticed the pretty event planner wasn’t afraid to go for over-the-top drama at times.
“Or without Carter?” Elizabeth asked, coming up on her other side.
“No, I don’t. But this seemed like it would be a lot of fun last night and this morning... I’m scared.”
Penny threaded her arm through Lindsey’s left one, and Elizabeth did the same on her right. “We’re here with you.”
She smiled. She’d made good friends. It was one thing that she’d gotten from the past year. The time she’d thought was lost because she hadn’t been skiing had turned out to be very valuable.
“Okay, I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” Lindsey said, bracing herself for whatever was about to come next.
“That’s good, because it looks as if Carter has noticed you,” Penny said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
“What?”
“My mom used to say that every morning when it was time to leave,” Penny said. “I don’t get to quote her often enough.”
Lindsey allowed herself to be distracted for a moment by Penny, but then searched out Carter. She found him, wearing his snowboarding outfit from the winter games last year, standing by his team table. And when their eyes met, she felt the courage that had been lacking in her until this moment.
She realized that once again she was drawing strength from him, and it felt right. He was her strength, and she needed to prove to him that he was more than a distraction. More than she’d labeled him, and that she was willing to take the risk and admit that she’d fallen for him.
Because she had fallen big-time for the bad-boy snowboarder.
And it was time to stop running from that love the way she’d stopped running from her fear of going down the mountain. She followed her friends through the crowded room, pausing to greet her team and tell them that she thought they’d win today.
The closer they got to the stage, the more her nerves almost got the better of her. But she had realized that nothing—not skiing again, not embarrassment—nothing scared her more than not telling Carter how she felt.
They got to the stage and Lars smiled at her and gave her the thumbs-up. She’d decided to take the entire
